Why we left New York

Leaving NY was not an easy choice. My husband and I were both born in NYC, we met at The School of Visual Arts on 23rd St. The city was our playground and source of inspiration. And then we grew up. Our priorities changed, we felt closed in, we needed room to breath. We moved to a suburb and became commuters and had two daughters.

As the girls grew we found ourselves needing more nature around us. My interests shifted from concerts and restaurants to mushroom hunting and knitting. My husband wanted more time with us, more time in the woods, but commuting to Times Square everyday left him little time for either. Commuting two hours each way is soul draining. And once he got there he had to fight the crowds of tourists and fake Elmos just to get into his building. After 19 years, he had enough! 

Our girls, now 15 and 19 were feeling it too. We all desperately needed a change, we had become stagnant both creatively and spiritually. It was either make a major change or continue to do the same thing day in and day out, which was killing us. 

My husband quit his job after 19 years as an Illustrator/Art Director at Nickelodeon and we told everyone that we loved that we were leaving. It was no easy task. Some understood, some felt abandoned. We packed up two PODS and drove across the country with two teens, two snakes and one guinea pig. Off to find adventure and seek our fortune!

So, where are we? Utah! We love it, we feel peaceful, at home and free. We have been here for two months and have no regrets. We have no idea what lies ahead, but we know that God has directed our path and He will continue to do so. 

Now that we are settled, I am free to devote more time to blogging this new adventure as it unfolds. 

I hope you are finding wonder and joy in unexpected places. Don’t be afraid of change, life is too short. 

MerRy ChRistMas

I hope this day finds you all well. Happy, healthy and looking forward to the new year and all it has to offer. We experienced a beautiful Christmas snowfall today. It was so peaceful and still afterward. 

While opening our presents our power and wifi went out. I could really "hear" the quiet. No humming fridge, no clanging radiators, no Christmas tunes, no tree lights.  It didn't matter much to us. We were happy together, opening gifts, chatting and telling each other "This is the best Christmas ever!". We say that every year, and every year we mean it. 

I found a new focus today that I will carry into 2018. I am going sink into the stillness of winter and listen. I will listen to God most importantly, to my husband, to my children, to my friends and to the birds.  I will listen without interrupting, without trying to fix it, without thinking of all the other things I "should" be doing instead of listening. 

I will be still.

Wishing you all 

A Merry Peaceful Christmas. 

When the wind changes.

Greetings! I am back! 

So much has happened since my last post. I will give you the nutshell rendition and slowly peel it away for future posts. First off, we decided to sell our townhouse in April when our already too high taxes were assessed for double. Selling a house is quite a chore. I had to empty it out, it has to be sparse and clean at all times because you never know when an agent will be requesting a viewing or an open house. It sold fairly quickly and we began our search for our next home. 

After viewing many homes, we decided to rent instead of buy. We began to feel strongly that we may not want to buy in NY again. Like Mary Poppins, the winds are changing and we want to be free and flexible to go.

We moved into our wonderful rented home in August. It suits our needs so well, my girls for the first time each have their our rooms. The grounds are beautiful, butting up against woods, lots of big rocks, moss and lichens, which I am crazy about.

During the moving/settling process these things occurred:

My younger daughter was found to be Lyme free!! After a year of unrelenting treatment that was amazing news. (This is a story I must unravel for you in future.)

My older daughter "graduated", finished her homeschooling. 

We had no fridge for a month.

My sister and her son came to stay with us because she has a chronic disease and needed help and care.

Almost every weekend we had out of town visitors sleeping here, before we even had furniture. One airbed...and it leaked.

We don't know where we will end up, but for now Halloween 2017 we are all together and well and happy. The foliage is spectacular. I will introduce myself to my new neighborhood as Mary Poppins tonight. My daughter just informed me that she is going to bake some black pretzels.

Life is good and this is where you will find me...until the wind changes.

 “The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." John 3:8  

palm trees and tumbleweeds

Last weekend I visited my friend Holly in sunny California. She is home taking a break from Cambodia, visiting her family in Cali for the holidays. I don't know when she will be in the states again, so I jumped at the opportunity to spend a few days with her. 

It was funny for me to see all the Christmas decorations amidst the palm trees and flowers. 

I met Holly's friends and family, ate Mexican food and best of all...chased tumbleweeds! I had only seen tumbleweeds in movies, so it was a big deal for me to experience the real thing. It was really windy and they were rolling all over looking like a crazy creatures. I needed my girls to see real tumble weeds too, so I ripped a couple of small fresh ones out of the dry ground and sent them home to them.

Last Christmas my husband gifted me with this decorative critter. When I first opened it I was confused. "Why are you giving me a cow?", was my first reaction. He explained that it is a deer and a very cool deer at that, once you insert branches or flowers for antlers. I have been having fun with it ever since. Oh, the name Milkie comes from the fact that I thought he was a cow. Now Milkie is  looking quite fancy with California tumbleweeds for Christmas.

Loving Fall (and food)

Beautiful isn't it? Autumn, it's the best. We sat on a rock with friends, eating our picnic lunch. This was the scene before us. Winter is rough here in NY, but I don't think I would ever be content to live somewhere without the four seasons. I'm sure there are people who would disagree. I guess it's what you are used to.

The candles are lit. Bringing warmth and light to the table since it's getting dark early these days. Anything left in the fridge is being turned into soup. "Leftover Soup" is always a hit. I can never duplicate Leftover Soup, but I can make an equally tasty new one.

Curries and stews are happening, cosy comfy bowls of warmth. As it gets colder and those beautiful leaves disappear, I put the color on the table. I am a true believer in the effect of beauty and color on our souls. Those gourd candle holders are festive and very simple to make. Just drill the proper size hole and stick your candles in. Bringing natural beauty into the home is easy and very cheap, even free. Grow some gourds (they pretty much grow themselves), pick up some acorns and leaves.

I'll take any excuse to use the oven, it warms up the house. Just like Leftover Soup, crumbles are  popular on my table. Any fruit or fruit combination will work. Frozen, fresh or canned fruits topped with oats, sucanat, butter and flour make for a more cheerful afternoon when that sun starts to go down. The smell of good things baking always lifts up the mood of the home.

I don't bake cookies that often. Just for holidays or special occasion. Halloween kicks off the cookie baking season for me. I'd rather the kids satisfy their sugar urge with home made cookies rather than the artificial candy that will inevitably appear. To color the gray mushrooms and black bats I used activated charcoal, just like my black donuts and black pie. 

I consider the arrival of Fall a worthy enough occasion to celebrate with friends and fall leaf cookies.
I am feeling happy, warm, and almost ready to take on winter.

Christmas and a lady

Isn't this rainbow tree beautiful? Such a good idea, and it looks much more amazing in real life. That lady peeking around is pretty amazing too. That's my Aunt Millie. She came to spend a couple of weeks with me and my family. I always liked her, but after spending so much time with her we found that we are kindred spirits.We stayed up each night talking and she shared many stories about her life with me. 

Like how she came to NYC from Puerto Rico as a child and how she met her husband at a dance in Brooklyn. It was just like a scene from West Side Story, he is Italian and even though they were married her father in law never knew that she was Puerto Rican! He assumed she was also Italian and the family kept the truth from him because "it would kill him". That's just one of the crazy things that I never knew. 

I also found out that Aunt Millie can do anything. She wanted a koi pond. So she built one, with a fountain. She can fix your ceiling fan or your toilet. She is an accomplished seamstress, cook, gardener and has a knack for taking in and nursing small hurt animals. She's had every type of rodent, fish, bird and cat. She once turned her son's closet into a coop for a broken pigeon, she housed an abandoned young hedgehog, she saved a baby squirrel and raised it to maturity. She is sweet, humble and always eager to give.

My girls are as smitten as I am with Aunt Millie. We knew it was a good sign when we picked her up at the train station and she had her guinea pig (Piggy-Woo) with her. She is the first person ever to see my girl's taxidermy and ask for a lesson. So, my daughter taught Aunt Millie how to skin and mount a mouse. She got a real kick out of it.  She told us, "See, you're never too old to learn something new!".

Millie is my Mom's sister so I've "known" her all my life, but I really have never known her until now. It's a shame that it took us so long, but I am thankful that we've connected and now my girls have her wonderful influence in their lives. 

This Christmas I found out that there are riches hidden right under our noses. The people in our lives are the greatest gifts we will ever be given, starting with Jesus Christ himself. 

Thank God for the people in your life and ask him to to deepen your love for them. Be deliberate about seeking out that hidden treasure that may be right under your nose.

M e r r y   C h r i s t m a s   &  G o d  B l e s s  Y o u   &  Y o u r s

The Punk Nugget

Introducing the latest addition to our pig pen. The breeder called her Cream Pie, my girls dubbed her The Punk Nugget. She is sweet and sassy and, as you can see very cute.

This is what she looks like right side up.

The Nugget was quickly accepted by the other gals and has settled in quite nicely. This is our current pig crew- The Groke (formerly Molly), The Punk Nugget, May and Little. We love them all, but we will always remember our first guinea pigs, the ones who started us out on this pig loving journey.

Gone but not forgotten - Pumpkin, Penny (my 1st and all time favorite) and The Woogie. 

What is Holy?

I am reading Hallowed Be This  House by Thomas Howard. I am enjoying it so much, I want to share it with you... 

“And as is true of any holy place, this one has for its activity the marking and celebrating of what is true and the keeping alive of the vision of what is true; namely, that is holy. This is done by offering things up in acts of consecration and praise.

This is what lifts those things up from the heap of mere ordinariness and makes them extraordinary (holy). 

They are ordinary things, of course, like eating and drinking and working and playing and bread and wine; but it is the ordinary stuff lifted up which is the holy. Holy things for the Christian and the Jew in any case, aren’t some remote category of things- mumbo jumbos, arcane regalia, or basalt meteorites from the sky. Holy things are ordinary things perceived in their true light, that is, as bearers of the divine mysteries and glory to us.

Looked at this way, eating becomes eucharistic, and working becomes the opus dei, and loving becomes an image of the City of God. It is our task in this shrine to take these ordinary things and, by lifting them up in oblation to God where we are set free to live in the splendor where eating and drinking and working and playing are known for what they really are forms of perpetual worship and therefore bliss.”

My Polish Easter

I enjoy keeping food traditions for holidays. My heritage is a mix of Polish, Hungarian and Puerto Rican. Easter always means Polish for me. Having lived with my Polish grandma for a good part of my life I can't imagine the Easter meal any other way. There is something about the experience of food that brings back memories very deeply. I love thinking that the traditions I create now will live through my children and their future children. 

My New Years Eve meal is always Latino. It can't get more festive for ringing in the new year than that! I make some of my own concoctions as well as my husband's favorites that he grew up with. He is 100% NY Puerto Rican, his family is steeped in food tradition. His mom has taught me how to make the family favorites. Our Thanksgiving is all American, we like to eat what we suspect the Pilgrims might have. For Christmas it's Victorian England for us, we have no familial ties there. Both my husband and I are literature fiends, we wish to experience a Dicken's fantasy Christmas. Let's get back to Easter!...

I used buttery babka dough this year to make buns for Good Friday.

Of course, the lamb cake made its appearance. You can see one of my "dressed" lambs here.

Days before Easter my daughter was busy planning out her egg dying designs as I was busy planning my meal. I will probably save this paper forever.

Who Are You?

When I made the switch from commuting designer to homeschooling housewife I jumped right into ladies groups, kid groups, floral aprons and regular dusting. None of those things have ever appealed to me, so why did I do them? Why do we put ourselves into molds that don’t fit?

I am not a floral apron. I am a stained lab coat with burn marks and a few rodent hairs. But I can still make you a mean scone if you want it.

My point? If you’re feeling trapped maybe you need to figure out who you are.

My Measuring Spoons

This is what they look like. Bent up and jumbled, but I still use them. If you have a sink disposal maybe you have some that look like this too. When my Mother in Law visits she often says "You need new spoons". I tell her it will just keep happening so why bother? She gave me a set that she used when my husband was little. I refused them because I don't want to ruin them.There are so many things in a house that are a bit off, like a chipped teacup.  Somehow the imperfect things become more homey to me. 

The messed up can be more endearing, like our new gerbil with the broken tail. I gifted my boyfriend (now husband) a baby ball python for his birthday 23 years ago and we still have her. Over the years my husband has fed her over 200 gerbils/rats. This is the first critter that has been pardoned by love. My daughter fell hard for this little guy with his broken off tail. She said "He's so kind. He's my buddy, how can I do that to my buddy?" Of course we couldn't do that to her buddy either. Maxwell Spock is proving himself to be a very sweet pet.

Dipping Salads

What makes fast food so easy to eat? It's available when you feel hungry. I often put together a "dipping salad" for those times when you might reach for a bag of chips or cookies. First off, I try not to buy chips and cookies often. I mostly do when I am having guests. For everyday I go with raw fruit and veg with a tasty dip. It's crunchy, it's colorful (big plus for me!), sweet  and salty. 

Dipping salads are so hands-on they sometimes do end up being played with. Sword fights with celery, making faces or other designs with the veg, and if you are small enough you can even wear it!

Yesterday we had this beautiful hot pink veggie. Do you know what it is?

Radish! Aren't these pretty? They are very sweet too. I have been eating these with slices of tart green apples, layering them together to make little sandwiches. I have mentioned this before, if you wash all your vegetables at one time to have them ready it will be much easier to eat them quickly. Remember, what makes it "fast" is that it is available immediately. With a bit of preparation you can have quick healthy snacks always at hand.

I made Paneer

I posted a video by Michael Pollan on FB this week about home cooking. I quoted him, "you can eat whatever you want as long as you cook it yourself". I was struck by his concept that if you cook at home you are less likely to eat fries everyday. With today's corporately cooked foods you can visit a drive thru and easily eat fries everyday. He goes deeper into the horrors of the industrial, pesticide potatoes that are used for those fries.

It got me thinking about this "eat anything you want" idea. I make donuts maybe 4-5 times a year. Same thing with cinnamon buns. My chocolate babka, once (for Easter). I love all these foods, they are amazingly tasty. They are even more special because they are connected to holidays or snowed in days with my family. These indulgences take time to make so they won't be made every day or even every week. Since I eat only my own versions of these things it keeps me from eating too much of them. 

People want their food quick. Fast foods are there for them and they are usually these carby, sugary fat foods. You want a quick sweet when you are out running errands? Carry bananas with you.  I take my chai or a pumpkin smoothy when running errands, I am never tempted to stop for a fast overpriced, overly sweetened beverage. Home cooking takes forethought and planning. It's not only cheaper and healthier, but it's tastier because you use quality ingredients and you tailor it to your liking.

The day after my FB post and comments on the subject of homemade food I found myself in front of the frozen food at my local healthy grocery store. I saw a pre-made frozen Indian paneer dish and I wanted it. Right away my own words came back to haunt me...."make it yourself". Practice what you preach, right? Paneer was a always mystery to me, exotic and delicious. I purposed to give it a shot.

I went home and found a recipe, it seemed too easy. Just three ingredients. I enlisted my youngest to help and we went at it. First I heated a 1/2 gallon of whole milk just until it started to boil. Then we streamed in 1/4 cup of water mixed with 1/4 cup of fresh lime juice. The curds immediately started to form, we stirred and then took it off the stove to let it sit for five minutes. We then poured it through a sieve (lined with a kitchen towel) over a large pyrex measuring cup.

All the whey that was collected. 

I wrapped it tightly in the towel, rinsed it under cold water and then put in back in the sieve to drain with a weight on top. I did this in the morning, by the time I was ready to cook dinner it was dry. I cut it into cubes and sauteed them in a mix of oil and butter. Once browned I removed from the pan while I made a sauce of jar tomatoes, ginger, garlic, lots of Indian spices and peas. It was better that the frozen counterpart and there was much more of it for the money. I ate 1/2 of it straight from the saute pan wrapped in hot sourdough naan. It was a perfect combination because at the same the cheese was drying out all day the nann dough was fermenting. The finished product is pretty fancy, but honestly the prep was not too time intensive. This was actually made on our busiest day out this week. I hope you will watch Michael Pollan's extremely informative video and even more I hope you will take the challenge to to make something that you usually buy in it's factory cooked form. Let me know how it goes.

The only other cheese I have ever attempted was goat yogurt cheese, which was even simpler that this paneer, check it out here: Hanging the Cheese

watching the celery grow

We are coming down from a week of busy- busy- busy. It feels so good to just stay home and *watch the celery grow. 

By coincidence (more like divine synchronicity) two of our friends, Rin and Holly  happened to be visiting us here in NY from Cambodia during the same week.  They both work with an organization called Water of Life. That's how we met them. Water of Life is a church and an orphanage in Pnom Phen. A couple of years ago my church began visiting and helping to support Water of Life. Through our close contact visiting and working together on various projects these folks have been knit into our family.

 Rin had never been to NY before so of course we wanted to show him a good time. Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the B'way production of Les Miserables were some of the things crammed into our week together. On top of that we had to show them the natural beauty of NY State. So we climbed a mountain...and had to climb back down. Whew!

Add to these activities VBS (Vacation Bible School) every day. My daughter signed up weeks ago to work at VBS, so we couldn't very well back out now. Our crazy week finished up with my big girl's 15th birthday. By then neither of us wanted or needed to plan a celebration. The whole week was a party! A friend suggested that a bunch of us gals could meet at our favorite tea room for a no stress/ no work birthday tea, so that's what we did. 

It was a wonderful and memorable week, but I'm really happy that I have no plans or obligations this week. The only deadline I have is to make a dress for my young one to wear to the Ren Faire this weekend. Ahhh. 

* The celery thing is fun to do with kids and you get some bonus food. It's a kind of recycling. My young one likes to measure and document the growth. Just take those cut base ends of celery stalks and put them in water. They will not only grow roots, but they will grow more celery. They won't get as big and as thick as they once were but they will grow. 

My Chai- part 1

I always thought I would post about my chai in the fall. During the cooler weather I always have a pot of chai going, and if you visit me you will have some too. But yesterday,  I woke up to a wet, chilly, 41 degree morning. I needed my chai. Like most foods or herbal concoctions that I make I don't  have a recipe written in stone. 

The spices I use are: cinnamon, cardamom, fennel, black pepper and bay leaf. This is the start of my favorite basic chai. 

The amount of spices shown here are for 6-8 cups of water.

Bring it to a boil and continue cooking for 30-60 minutes. If I'm not drinking it right away I'll leave it to steep and reheat later to finish. 

It turns a nice red amber color. The longer is cooks, the deeper it gets. Now, it's time to add the tea and the ginger. I use black or red (rooibos) tea, depending on my mood or the time of day (caffeine). I have also made it with green tea, for a cold chai drink (but I will leave that subject for another day). 

You will lose a cup or two of the water through the cooking process, so adjust your tea amount accordingly. I put the tea in to steep with a couple of tbs of fresh ginger. I use ginger paste. I take an entire ginger root (unpeeled) and Vitamix it.

When the tea is done steeping, strain everything out and add sweetener, vanilla or milk if you like. It already has a degree of sweetness from the cinnamon, but I like the extra flavor of coconut sugar. 

Yesterday, as I said, was such a dreary day. It took more than just my chai to take the chill out and brighten things up. I used my happiest cup and made a strawberry crumble with oats, coconut sugar, ww flour and butter. Yum!

My daughters didn't know what I was cooking up for tea time. The small one started jumping around and laughing when I showed them the strawberry crumble. "What's so funny?", I asked. 

Apparently, while I was busy making strawberry crumble, she was busy making a felt strawberry. 

Our life is chock full of these little moments of synchronicity.

Synchronicity: The experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence.

Hello Chickadee!

We were walking through a park eating popcorn. There were a bunch of chickadees fluttering around us, my husband suggested that we hold some corn in our hands for the chickadees. He said they would land on us to eat it and they did! These little feet felt so light and cold.

They landed on all of us and kept coming back for more until all of the popcorn was gone. They are very brave for such little birds. Maybe they are just very greedy!

We get quite a few chickadees at our bird feeder at home too. We have a certain couple that my girls have named Timothy and Nellie. They make up extensive stories about them. While watching them at the feeder one morning (and telling the tales), my daughter sketched them. Later that day she took her drawing upstairs and returned with a felt chickadee. He has little glass bead eyes and a soft yellow tinged belly. He sat on our kitchen windowsill for months. Other crafty things the girls made joined him there. It got a bit cluttered looking, so I had the idea to string them all up. They are not piled up, falling on the floor, or ignored. Instead they now bring life to an otherwise empty corner.

lid recycle tip

Did you know that mayonnaise jar lids fit these size canning jars perfectly? I use Trader Joes, but I think all big brands and stores brands use the same lids for mayo and they're usually blue. 

Doll Skins

When we are cooped up in the house as we have been, my girls rummage through my stuff. My closet is filled with interesting boxes, baskets and bins containing objects waiting to be rediscovered. I have a large bin filled with my childhood dollhouse furniture and miniatures. I have huge fabric bins, yarn bins, vintage clothes and shoes for dress up (I've seriously got at least 5 cloaks), embroidery supplies, beads, my grandmas jewelry (and mine), hats and DOLLS. 

Vintage Barbies and Dawn dolls, my Sashas, dollhouse dolls, a suitcase of 18" dolls and another suitcase of clothes for them. There are also dolls that I have made over the years. Some have sentimental value because of the times in my life that they were created. I call them my "therapy dolls". There are also dolls I made with the intent to sell, but my girls won't let me because they have fallen in love with them. There are too many of these. 

 So my young one was rummaging and found a pile of what I call "doll skins". I just stuffed them and I am about to breath life into them. I am looking forward to it, it's been a while since I made a doll. I have been knitting too much! I have these ideas for male dolls. I really want to put some beards on! Stay tuned for who will emerge from this pile of skins. If my girls will let me, I will put some into my Etsy shop. We'll see how that goes...

Under the Weather

This is my little arsenal of remedies I've been carrying around. I keep everything in one place, always close at hand.  I can quickly put drops into an ear, squirt a sore throat, rub oil into lymph nodes, message arnica into aching thighs.
You get the picture.

We are "under the weather".

On the bright side, 10 skeins of mushroom colored yarn and our new read aloud book arrived today. 

Perfect timing really. It's such a dull and rainy day. What's a better way to nurse a cold than with a new story and a new project?

While waiting for the yarn for my newest project to arrive, I needed a little something to keep busy. I started a super quick ribbed vest on number 15 needles. I like wearing knitted vests around the house. They keep me warm, while leaving my arms fully free. I was knitting along and when it came time to start decreasing for the armholes, I just couldn't do it. Even though I've had this yarn for years I'd never seen how it looked actually knitted. I love the soft color changes. So, I just kept knitting...I still am. I guess it's going to be a big scarf (maybe shawl?). 

Under the weather: Colloquial expression for sick or ill as, for example, to be under the weather with the flu. The phrase "under the weather" came from British sailing ships. When a sailor became ill he was confined below deck out of the weather, so it was said that he was under the weather. (medterms.com)